Realist Thought and Truth as a Motivating Reason

An Argument for Disjunctivism about our Motivational Reasons

Bibliographic Data

ID21461881
AuthorsJohan Gersel (0000-0002-1573-5347, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-09-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueErkenntnis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0165-0106 • E-ISSN: 1572-8420
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10670-025-00991-z
OpenAlexW4414314830
LanguageEN
References cited34

Realist and anti-realists disagree about whether our practice of forming empirical judgement is governed by the layout of a mind-independent reality. This paper develops an argument in favour of disjunctivism concerning the motivating reasons provided by experience. It does so by considering what is needed to ground our empirical thinking as subject to realist norms. The argument takes outset in a form of minimal pragmatism which claims that the realist norms governing our practice of forming ordinary empirical judgement must be grounded in the implicit aims the judgement forming community have with engaging in that practice. The paper then defends the idea that we can only ground our realist occupation with the mind-independent world when forming perceptual judgements in our practice of rationally responding to the mind-independent world when we form such judgements. This in turn requires that we adopt disjunctivism regarding the role perception and hallucination plays as motivating reasons for judgment. Hence, if we accept the idea that our aims in forming judgements must ground the norms of that practice, then realists should also be disjunctivists about the role experience plays as a provider of motivating reasons for judgement

Common ground · Internalism and externalism · Judgement · Ontology · Perception · Pragmatism · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science

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